Ben Galbraith, Ajax consultant, author, JavaOne rock star

Ben Galbraith is the co-director of Developer Tools at Mozilla. Ben has long juggled interests in both business and tech, having written his first computer program at six years old, started his first business at ten, and entered the IT workforce at twelve. He has delivered hundreds of technical presentations world-wide, produced several technical conferences, and co-authored over a half-dozen books. He has enjoyed a variety of business and technical roles throughout his career, including CEO, CIO, CTO, and Chief Software Architect roles in medical, publishing, media, manufacturing, advertising, and software industries. He lives in Palo Alto with his wife and four children.

Presentation: "Web Developer Tools"

Time: Monday 14:00 - 14:45

Location: To be announced

Abstract: The Web Platform often gets dinged for its lack of great tools. In the past, that would have been a fair demerit. And while, in the present, there are surely some gaps when compared to other environments, in reality, there are a bunch of interesting developer tools for the Web. In this session, we explore some of the most popular of these, including Firebug and another new tool from Mozilla.
Keywords: Tools, Firebug, Web 2.0

Presentation: "The Web Platform"

Time: Monday 16:15 - 17:00

Location: To be announced

Abstract: A few years ago, Web developers discovered that browsers had hidden within them a few capabilities that when properly utilized could redefine the state of the web application art. Initially referred to as 'Ajax', these technologies have gone from being simple hacks into becoming the foundation for an exciting new client platform--the Web Platform. While Ajax was initially about wringing a bit more power out of stagnant browsers, times have changed: browsers are evolving at impressive speed, to say nothing of the Internet-speed evolution of the libraries built on top of them. In this session, we discuss the state of the Web Platform, including a look at the latest technologies and a peek over the horizon at what's to come.
Keywords: Ajax, Web platform, web 2.0, visionary